"The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals-not for the person we're going to be when we reach them-we set our goals for the person we are when we set them."

This quote comes from Jim Coudal, leader of his advertising and design agency Coudal Partners, in his talk for Creative Mornings in Chicago. (You can watch the video of the talk above.) When you're setting goals a lot of things get in the way. Even if we overcome those things and achieve our goals, they can sometimes end up unsatisfying because we made them as the person we are today. It's easy enough to set a goal to be successful, financially secure, and so on, but you want that based on the person you are right now. What you may want to consider is who you want to become and how you want to grow. The obvious example is choosing a (seemingly) responsible career path over one that matters to you. It may solve problems now, but will it make you happy in the future? Everyone has room to grow even if they're already happy, so it doesn't hurt to think about who you hope to become when considering what you want to do.